


Unloading Hell Behind Him

by Faoi_chielt



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - War, Alternate Universe - World War II, Drabble, Historical AU, M/M, WWII, pic promt drabbles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-21
Updated: 2013-10-24
Packaged: 2017-12-30 02:09:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1012791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Faoi_chielt/pseuds/Faoi_chielt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>WWII au-verse that I'm drabbling with picture sets.  </p><p>Dean is a medical officer during WWII and Castiel Novak is his medical aide.  When the hospital they work at is bombed, their paths diverge. Dean is imprisoned in a POW camp and Castiel is sent to the front lines as a medic.  This is the story of the long, difficult road to their reunion and how sometimes salvation is found in the least likely places in the most extraordinary ways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

This morning he’d woken up indecorously: face down on his desk, a sheaf of unfinished paperwork at his elbow. Dean rose up, straightened his rumpled coat and wearily lifted the turnarm from its repetitive, but ultimately useless, scratching at the record his aide had left playing on the phonograph. Muzzily, he took note of the windows. The music had finished long ago, he decided, as the light that filtered through his cheap office blinds was watery and weak.

Dawn was here.

Scrubbing at his face with a groan, Dean staggered back over towards his desk and lowered himself gingerly into his weathered chair. He shook himself with a huff and reached for the next manila folder and soon the sound of his stilted typing filled the small office.

" _Dear Mrs. James,_

 _This letter is being written to confirm the recent telegram in which you were regretfully informed of the death of your son_ ,—”

Dean hardly noticed at all when his aide slipped in and put another soft record on; he left just as inconspicuously as he’d entered, leaving nothing but a freshly brewed cup of joe within his Divisional Officer’s reach.

Good kid, that Novak, Dean thought to himself absently.

" _Dear Mrs. Shur_ —"

 

Dean stared at the ground blankly. He’d been pushed past all previously explored levels of endurance. There was no longer any way for him to know how long it had been since his capture; since the bombing of the hospital; since his last cup of coffee. His breath rattled in his chest and Dean struggled to stay conscious. Giving the Germans the satisfaction of his weakness was not an option.

Bent double from the pain of the shrapnel in his chest and the rough push of the grip wound into his short hair, Dean Winchester resigned himself to an unimaginable hell. One that he’d known for the past year might become his reality at any moment…

A Nazi prisoner of war camp.


	2. Chapter 2

**Daytrip With the Panzerzuege**

He’d give this to the Krauts: they were efficient. Dean hardly had time to register the cloud of his own chilled breath puffing in front of his bleary vision before he was crammed into yet another container car. In a move that Dean rationalized was intended to ensure his isolation from junior personnel, the Germans had appropriated a cramped corner of a non-descript supply car to house him. Angered by his physical weakness, Dean spat curses at them raggedly in his stilted German. His brother, Sam, would be pleased to know he had recalled that much given Dean’s state.

Dean spared himself a moment to be thankful his brother was still too young for the second coming of the Great War. That his brother had listened to Dean’s pleas not to lie about his age and enlist regardless of the potential repercussions.

_“Damn it, Sammy! Just stay here where you belong. Go to school, ask that pretty blonde to the Autumn Festival— live your life and pray to God this war is over before you’re old enough for the draft.”_

_"I have just as much a right to serve as you, Dean!"_

_"Do you really want to do that to Mom? Both her boys sent off to bleed for soil that isn’t even ours?"_

Blinking away the sting of that memory, Dean grit his teeth and eyed the lone corporal they’d assigned to guard him. Wisely, the youth had taken position well out of reach from any potential strike by Dean’s long legs. He’d even put his back squarely against a stack of crates to face his prisoner directly at all times. With his arms shackled from a solid iron eyelet welded to the car’s corrugated wall, Dean was neatly incapacitated. Worse, he could feel his wounds pull with every jarring tilt of the train’s passage. The bandages wound tightly around his torso were surely soaked through and his skin burned and froze in sickening waves.

Infection and dehydration were the true enemy, Dean recalled with a wry twist to his cracked lips. As a Colonel in charge of an entire division of one of the largest Allied hospitals in Europe, he’d given the company line many times at morning quarters. It was almost poetic that he had now felt the jagged teeth of both.

Rest when you can, they’d trained again and again. So, with nothing left to do but stare unnervingly into the eyes of his nervous young guard Dean allowed himself to drift away.

* * *

* * *

 

Dean started awake with a gasp. Immediately, he regretted the decision as it made his head spin alarmingly. As he desperately fought the urge to chuck up, Dean noted the faint sound of footfalls approaching. He moved to swipe at his trembling lips and his stomach lurched again when the movement was drawn short by the thick metal cuffs circling his wrists.

"Well, that can’t be good," Dean said quietly to himself. His voice was a faint rasp that grated painfully. God, he was thirsty. So thirsty it actually ached.

Dean took a visual inventory of the tiny, ill-equipped hospital room. The cot he lay on was old and rusted, but solid steel; the blankets covering him were a scratchy, irritating wool that could only be government issue. Plucking at the blankets and peering underneath confirmed that Dean’s battered body was covered by nothing but a simple white tee and his own rather dingy undershorts.

Abruptly, the door to his badly lit room opened and Dean’s gaze automatically jerked towards the movement.

 _Here we go, Dean-o_ , he thought grimly.


	3. The Dulag

* * *

 

The man who walked through the door was impeccable in his lab coat and uniform, something Dean had never quite managed however hard he tried.  His hair was a non-descript sandy color and his eyes were a flat grey.  They reminded Dean of gunmetal; gleaming, cold and lifeless.  Though on the whole, the man looked pleasant enough, those eyes sent a chill of foreboding down Dean's spine.  

"Colonel Winchester, it is so excellent to finally make your aquiantance.  You've been asleep for some time," the man said smoothly.  His voice was smooth and cloying with the faintest hint of a sharp clip to it.  Definitely not an American.  "I'm glad you're feeling better," he continued blithely, spreading his hands with a benign smile.

"Who are you?" Dean asked sharply.

The other man's mouth pulled into a faint frown, "Do you know where you are?" he asked, leaning forward and scrutinizing Dean so thoroughly that he reflexively curled his fingers around the edge of his coarse blanket.  The "doctor" might have looked like an unremarkable if meticulous librarian, but those eyes belonged to a killer.

"Kansas?" Dean quipped with an edge of false hope.

The doctor suprised him with a guffaw, deep and full.  He even went so far as to lean back and laugh up, up and up until Dean could see his spine bow backward.  It gave Dean time enough to thoroughly scan his new aquaintance's body.  He was not armed, unless you counted a stethescope and a small flashlight as deadly weapons.  But before Dean could contemplate further those steely grey eyes met his again.

"You've got spirit," the man said, tilting his head in approving acknowledgment. "I like that.  My name is Dr. Lukas Morgenstern and I will be your examiner today.  It is my pleasure to be the first to welcome you to the  _Dulag._ "

 

* * *

 


End file.
